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Where did it come from and can it be trusted?
 The scientific process of attempting to ascertain the
original wording of a text
 Basically what exactly did Paul write down on the original letter to
XYZ group or person
The Bible was not faxed over from heaven
It was written over a 40+/- period
Written by 8+ men
Some tax collectors, fishermen and a doctor.
Written in Greek
5336 manuscripts survive
Of those only a few are 100% complete
Most are fragments, incompletes or damaged
Some written on vellum others on papyrus
 Before the invention of the printing press all
manuscripts were hand written
 Hundreds of thousands if not millions of copies
were made
 Once an original manuscript was copied it was
ceremoniously destroyed. This would prevent the
physical word of God to fall into disrepair.
 There are only 3 remaining copies of Flavius
Josephus History (250AD)
 There are only 9 copies remaining of Gaius Julius
Caesar’s “Gallic Histories” (900 AD)
 Only 1 copy of Cornelius Tacitus’s “Annals of Roman
History” remain. (100 AD). (AKA the main document
that we base our understanding of Roman history)
 In A.D. 303 the Roman Emperor Diocletian issued an edict
to destroy Christians and their Bible. The persecution that
followed was brutal. Over a burned and extinguished Bible,
Diocletian built a monument on which he wrote these
triumphant words, "Extincto nomene Christianorum" (the
name Christian is extinguished). Twenty-five years later,
Diocletian was dead and the new Emperor Constantine
commissioned fifty copies of the Bible to be prepared at
government expense.
 In 1776, Voltaire, the French philosopher, announced, "One
hundred years from my day, there will not be a Bible in the
earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian
curiosity-seeker." One hundred years later Voltaire was
dead and his own press and house were being used to print
and store Bibles by the Geneva Bible Society. One hundred
years from the day of Voltaire's prediction, the first edition
of his work sold for eleven cents in Paris, but the British
government paid the Czar of Russian one-half million
dollars for an ancient Bible manuscript.
 With only 130,000 word there are over 400,000
variants
 There are NO autographic text available
 The Counsel Of Nicaea voted on what books would
be in the NT and if Jesus was even the Son of God
 Due to the facts (assumed facts) the NT is corrupted
and cannot and should not be believed in
 They did not vote on whether or not Jesus was GOD
 There was however several groups that wanted to
change the word of God to say He never came in the
flesh
 These groups include:
 Gnostics (Coptics)
 Melitians and Aritians
 They did meet to vote on what text to include in the NT
cannon.
 Cannon is simply a standard or rule to follow when
determining what to include and or exclude with in a
book or series or writings
 The counsel was not the first to try to build a list a
list to weed out the fakes
 List had been collected as early as 145AD
 How did the Counsel determine what books to include?
 The books had to meet the following requirements:
 There can be no textual contradictories. Within the texts.
 The document must have and claim Holy or apostolic
connection (Claim to be inspired)
 Must predate the Council’s meeting (by at least 1 year)
 When votes were taken there was very little differences of the
318 voting members (most votes were 316/2)
 Over 50+ books were submitted (outside what we
have in our NT) for consideration to be included in
the NT
 Those 50 fell into the following categories:
 Apocrypha
 Pseudepigrapha
 Books written by “church fathers”
 Agrapha
 Gnostic Gospels
 What is a variant?
 A variant does not mean an error, just a difference between
two manuscripts
 Example if there are 5300 manuscripts and in only
1manuscript there is a difference. This would then be
counted at 5299 variants.
4
areas of variants
Spelling
Word order, additions and deletions
Meaningful yet not viable
Meaningful and viable
Over 60% of variants or over 240,000
 27 ie/ei replacements
 2000+ phonetic spelling issues (may be due to
dictaion)
Example Matt 1:3. A
word that should have
been an “a” was
instead written as an
“e”.
REALLY SHAKES
OUR FAITH
RIGHT???
 Additions or deletions
 Example Jesus the Christ vs Jesus Christ
 Mary mother of Jesus vs Mary the mother of Jesus
 James brother of John vs James the brother of John
The “movable” Nu
 Just as we in English use ‘a’ and ‘an’ depending on
whether a vowel proceeds them. The Greek uses Nu to
ease reading. However some manuscripts they are used
and in others they are left off but over all they change
nothing in reading or meaning.
• With out the Nu (v)= They set
• With the NU (v) = They set (or
will set, can set)
 Matt 1:21
 For he will save the world or for he will save his people
 Matt 1:23
 You will call his name or he will call his name or they will call this name
 Rom 5:1
 Let us have peace vs we have peace

Mark 16:9-20
 Some early manuscripts do not contain this passages
 Of those most are incompletes
 One script does contain this passage but dates to the
1200AD
 John 7:53-8:11
 Most manuscripts do not contain this passage
 Only one known text places these passages in their
current location
 Some that contain it, but place it in a different place
(either at the end of the book or after John 7:44)
Isa 40:8
Matt 24:35
1 Pet 1:25
It is unique in its continuity.
It is unique in its circulation.
It is unique in its translation.
 It is unique in its survival.
It is unique in withstanding attack.